Traffic growth through Vnukovo, Domodedovo slows

Albeit at a slower pace, Vnukovo remains the fastest growing of Moscow's three main airports (Leonid Faerberg / Transport-photo.com)

Traffic through Moscow’s three main airports continued to grow in July, although at quite differing rates. Vnukovo and Domodedovo demonstrated slightly slower growth, whereas Sheremetyevo kept gaining momentum.

Traffic through the city’s fastest growing airport, Vnukovo, grew 31.5% year-on-year to 2.094 million passengers. In June, the figure had stood at 36%. Notably, international traffic skyrocketed 116.6% to 886,000 passengers.

The most popular international routes were to leisure destinations: Antalya (Turkey), Larnaca and Pathos (Cyprus), Heraklion (Greece), Burgas (Bulgaria), Istanbul (Turkey), Barcelona (Spain), and to two destinations in the CIS: Dushanbe (Tajikistan) and Baku (Azerbaijan).

Domestic traffic grew just 2%, but still exeeded the international passenger numbers at 1.208 million. The list of the most popular destinations included resorts on the Black Sea coast (Sochi, Simferopol, Anapa, and Krasnodar), as well as St. Petersburg, Makhachkala, Rostov-on-Don, Surgut, and Mineralnye Vody.

Domodedovo welcomed more than 3.5 million passengers in July, up 5.8% on the same period last year (its June growth rate was 8.3%). The airport did not report separtely on international versus domestic traffic; the list of the busiest routes from Domodedovo includes flights to Batumi in Georgia, Catania in Italy, Thessaloniki, Vienna, and Barcelona, as well as Russia’s Kaliningrad, Krasnodar, Makhachkala, Ufa, and Surgut.

Since the beginning of the year Domodedovo’s traffic has been growing faster on international routes at 18% up year-on-year in January through July (7.7 million passengers). Domestic traffic grew only 3.2% over that period, to 9.7 million.

Sheremetyevo, Russia’s largest airport, almost caught up with Vnukovo in terms of overall traffic growth rate in July, at 22.9%, reaching 4.22 million passengers. However, unlike its competitors, Sheremetyevo saw its domestic traffic grow faster than international passenger numbers: plus 26.1% year-on-year to 1.852 million passengers.

The most popular destinations were St. Petersburg, Sochi, Simferopol, Yekaterinburg, and Krasnodar. International traffic grew by 20.6% to 2.395 million passengers. Travelers’ preferred destinations were Paris, Tel Aviv, Prague, Shanghai, and Beijing.

Powered by Air Transport Observer, Russia & CIS’ premier information provider on commercial aviation with a 20-year legacy, Russian Aviation Insider provides you with timely and reliable business news, insights and analysis on commercial aviation all around CIS.